After you’ve been hurt or disappointed in a few relationships it’s easy to feel like you have to protect yourself from more pain.
If you wall up your heart it will be hard to give out the kind of energy that will attract like-minded and healthy people. It will be hard to trust and enjoy anyone you meet.
The trick is to Keep Your Heart Open but to not get so attached that you can’t walk away when things go badly.
Keep your eyes open, Keep your boundaries, Keep your values and Respect your self.

If you keep falling in love with someone over and over, you know it’s love.
I think sometimes that being in a long term relationship is really like having several marriages.
If you are an ever-evolving person committed to personal and relationship growth, the person you were when you met your partner is not the same person you will be at different points of your life. Neither will they be, hopefully.
When you both have grown and developed different aspects of your selves, have children, have careers, become empty-nesters, etc don’t you look at each other from time to time and say, “Who is this person?”
Aren’t there times you aren’t sure that you even love each other anymore?
Look for the special moments when you look again and say, “Wow! That’s an amazing person! I’m falling in love with them all over again!”

It isn’t OK to offend from the victim position. It is still offending and isn’t a fair fight. If someone hurts you, set a boundary, walk away, ask for what you need….don’t try to hurt them back with the excuse that they did it first.

In Part One I asked the question: “How do you know if your reticence is about you being scared to connect for fear of being hurt again or if you’re picking up on some danger signs?”, and then went on to talk about how to figure out the Red Flags, how to look at danger signs.
One of my readers reminded me that I hadn’t finished the second part of my thinking about this topic.
In this blog I want to talk about the “what if it is about your fears and anxieties?” piece of this.

It is possible that you are making mountains out of molehills yourself because you are scared of being hurt again or because you are a person who has never really been that comfortable letting anyone too close. Is it possible that, after having had bad experiences and made mistakes, you aren’t sure you can trust yourself anymore?

There ARE people who meet and “fall in love at first sight” and actually stay in love. Sometimes your radar and intuition turn out to be right!

If you are someone who has, as I call it, Done Your Own Work, you may have figured out what your own issues and blocks are and do better at sorting out what your responses are about and adjust for them in your conscious and rational mind. Some of this may even have become more intuitive and less hard work to stay conscious of. You might find yourself even having a physical reaction to certain behaviors, comments or situations before you’re aware of what they remind you of. If you haven’t Done Your Own Work there is a lot of subconscious emotional interpretation going on that you aren’t even aware of that impacts your responses and behaviors.

If you’ve been through several relationships or if you’ve only had a few, you’ve thought about what worked and didn’t work, you’ve thought about how to be The Best Person You Want To Be and what you want from others. You’ve been around the block enough to recognize some bad things and see them sooner. You might make mistakes but, hopefully, you don’t make THE SAME mistakes again.

If there are no BRIGHT RED FLAGS or if you do see some RED FLAGS but you know these are related to your own issues, you can give it some time to see how things play out in a relationship. Sometimes, as Jung said to Freud, a cigar IS just a cigar, and sometimes people’s intial behavior upon meeting a new person is just anxiety and not a sign of character flaws.

I keep asking this question: What’s the big rush? Why do you feel as if you have limited time or have to make a decision RIGHT THIS MINUTE?

I think feeling rushed is YOUR issue even if someone is overtly or covertly pushing you. They might want to UP THE ANTE to get you to “pick them” but you don’t have to absorb their anxiety and work on their agenda.

What’s your agenda? To get a relationship fast or to get a good one?

As I always say: “The trick is to keep your heart open but don’t get so attached that you can’t walk away if it turns out to be the wrong person”. “It can take four seasons to really know someone” and I have had experiences where I have found out things even further into a relationship that I was totally surprised about.

So the message here is…take your time….keep your eyes open….check things out….be yourself….and wait for the person who is right for you who likes you just the way you are!
We all deserve to be liked and loved and cared for and there is someone out there who will feel that way about you. Stop Trying To Fit The Round Peg In A Square Hole to make relationships work. Stop trying to make your fantasy about someone, a relationship or yourself, a reality. It doesn’t work that way!

Tweet The only people you should allow into your “inner circle” are those who are kind, loving, respectful and generous. They should motivate, encourage, enhance you and bring happiness into your life. If you [...]

The only people you should allow into your “inner circle” are those who are kind, loving, respectful and generous. They should motivate, encourage, enhance you and bring happiness into your life. If you know people who do none of these things, let them go or don’t let them into your inner circle.